The Willamette Activity Center in the city of Oakridge has been shut for the past three years.
The walls and parts of the roof are boarded up to deter trespassers and kids from sneaking in. Inside, buckets catch rainfall from the tattered roof.
As City Administrator James Cleavenger walks down the hallway, he stops by a directory that lists the many services the center provided before leaky roofs and an old electric system closed it in 2022.
“The Municipal Court was here, DMV, the food program, Head Start, education, Legal Aid, Looking Glass, mental health services. We don't have any [public] mental health services now.” said Cleavenger. “I mean, [there was] everything. [You] could come in, drop your kid off, just apply for stuff. There was childcare available for that reason.”
After the center closed, the town spent the last three years fundraising and grant writing to get the WAC up and running once again. By 2025, they had raised upwards of $6 million to revive it into a hub that provided a mixture of services. However, they were left scrambling when their largest grant, a $3.7 million federal grant awarded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to build a resilience hub, was rescinded.
Now, the town is still moving forward with construction at the WAC with their leftover funds. According to city officials, the center has the potential to be a center point of the town that offers any and all services again.
Many services
The Willamette Activity Center opened in 1980 when the city of Oakridge bought the building after its previous tenant, the Willamette Elementary School, closed. At its heyday, the center was a “one stop shop” where residents of Oakridge could access services simultaneously like visiting the DMV, filing for WIC benefits and getting health services.
Cleavenger says having a singular area where one can connect with as many resources at once is important for a small aging town like Oakridge where it might not always be feasible to travel all across town for different services.
According to the Census Bureau, the median household income for a family in Oakridge is around $35,000 and the average age of a resident is 39 years old. 29.6% of Oakridge lives below the poverty line, a number significantly higher than the national average of 12.4%.
“[Having] whatever they kind of need to do, all in one space [means] they can be referred to different areas, because there may be services they didn't even know about that will become available again,” said Cleavenger.
The Resilience Hub
Part of the WAC was slotted to become a “resilience hub” after Lane County won a $20 million federal grant to create resilience hubs around the county. The hubs were supposed to provide support during natural disasters and emergencies like flooding and wildfires. Additionally, the hubs were also scheduled to do “resilience work” by helping to train medical and non-medical volunteers and storing things like medical supplies.
Oakridge city officials say the resilience hub would have provided a much needed support for the town.
“We are no strangers to climate-fueled disasters. Wildfire smoke has become an annual burden, and in recent years, Oakridge has twice come under direct wildfire threat,” wrote Oakridge Mayor Bryan Cutchen in a Declaration for an ongoing lawsuit filed by "Appalachian Voices” against the federal government. “During the 2022 Cedar Creek Fire, the city was under evacuation notice for weeks, and the limitations of our emergency infrastructure were laid bare.”
Currently, the nearest designated large-scale evacuation shelter is the Lane Events Center, which is 46 miles away.
Lane County and other EPA grant recipients are currently filing a lawsuit against the federal government in response to the grant being rescinded. However, Lane County official Devon Ashbridge said there’s no clear timeframe for what happens next.
“The status of the EPA grant hasn’t changed; we’re still contesting the loss of the funding,” wrote Ashbridge in an email to KLCC. “We’re in uncharted territory. “
Moving Forward
Now with nearly half that money taken back, Cleavenger said the city is in the awkward position of backpedaling on the promises that were made.
“It's kind of a breach of trust between us–local government and our citizens–because we told them that ‘resilience hub is coming, emergency operation center is coming,’” said Cleavenger. “And now we're having to say, ‘Well, maybe not.’”
Despite setbacks, the city is planning to move forward with construction in August with other funding sources like $600,000 from the state of Oregon to expand Oakridge’s Community Health and Medical Services Center to the WAC and help from the Chamber Family Foundation to run a food box program.
Standing in one of the offices at the WAC, Cleavenger takes stock of the work left to be done.
“The water damage is pretty bad. Come fall, there’ll be‒Well no! Come fall we’ll have a new roof!” exclaimed Cleavanger. “But normally, we’d have like 10 buckets in here which is silly but we do what we can.”
